I think it’s a success . . . they spent most of the last two days hiding under there with their cars and train tracks.

This was an interesting project- it was my first time dealing with heavy canvas, so that was a bit of a learning curve. If you decide to make something like this I definitely want to mention the importance of a bigger needle (I used a denim needle) and sewing a ton on scraps to get a good idea of the tension settings you need. The most useful thing you can do is to pin everything. The weight of the fabric became incredible by the time I was dealing with the last side and that was hard enough to deal with without also worrying about lining things up properly as they went through the machine.

The idea came from this, but I deliberately kept the design plain- this can be a fort, a house, a cave, a nest . . . whatever the boys dream up this little place can become that very thing. I cut 6 individual pieces (two doors, the back, two sides and the top) to fit the table closely. I cut the doors to overlap by 4 inches so that it is “closed” even when they go in and out several times. I used bias tape on the door flaps (mostly for my younger one to easily recognize the doorway) and hemmed the bottom edge.